In the News: Affordable housing complex planned for site near Mondawmin Mall
By: Jonathan Munshaw and Camille Harrison,
Developers are planning a new 94,000-square-foot low-income housing complex across from Mondawmin Mall.
The project by Enterprise Community Partners is planning to break ground next spring. It will be a 70-unit apartment complex with one, two and three-bedroom units located at 2700 Reisterstown Rd. The site is directly across the street from the mall and the Mondawmin Metro stop.
Ninety percent of those units will be reserved for residents with low-to-moderate income, Ron Wilson, the director of housing initiatives for Enterprise, said during a presentation to the city’s Urban Design and Architecture Review Panel Thursday. Wilson said another 15 percent of those units will be set aside for non-elderly disabled residents.
Enterprise was founded in 1982 by developer Jim Rouse and his wife, Patty — whose Rouse Company also orchestrated the master plan to overhaul Columbia in Howard County. Metro Heights will be built on 12 vacant lots behind a well-known mural along the sidewalk on Reisterstown Road that welcomes visitors to Greater Mondawmin.
The development will be called Metro Heights and will also include a surface parking lot and a 32-space underground parking garage. Enterprise officials said construction is expected to take about a year. Developers declined to give a cost estimate for the building, and said they were not ready to discuss how much unit rental costs.
UDARP members on Thursday gave Metro Heights schematic approval, but the group advised developers that they still need to return and receive design approval for the project. Panelist David Rubin praised Enterprise and Marks, Thomas Architects, designers of the Metro Heights building, for being able to design a modern building on a tight budget.
“There’s no segregation here [between low-income and disabled residents],” he said. “It’s really a nice combination of our community.”